4500rpm or 5700rpm

[johnhamler1]

how do i know at what speed my HDD is spining???
for laptop of course.

[unmei]

with some luck you find specs when entering the drive "name" into google. By "name" i refer to the crypric string that shows up in explorer->C:\->properties->hardware. At least i saw the RPMs of all my drives already in the google results without even going to any of the actual pages.

[feedback]

how do i know at what speed my HDD is spining???
for laptop of course.
Download the freeware app. 'Everest Home Edition'...Get It Here.
(http://www.majorgeeks.com/download4181.html)
It will give you much information(HD, motherboard,display etc., etc.) about your computer.

In Everest Home Edtion, for HD speed go to Storage then ATA there you will see the rotational speed.

The below is only some of what it shows for my laptop computer HD.

Field Value
Rotational Speed 7200 RPM

Field Value
Average Rotational Latency 4.2 ms

Field Value
Max. Internal Data Rate 561 Mbit/s

Field Value
Buffer Size 8 MB

Field Value
Average Seek 10 ms

Field Value
Full Seek 18 ms

Field Value
Physical Dimensions 100 x 70 x 9.5 mm




P.S. I replaced my stock 4200rpm HD.

[Delphin]

how do i know at what speed my HDD is spining???
for laptop of course.


Actually the spin rate is just one of those simple minded ‘marketing hype’ numbers and doesn’t guarantee anything by itself.

The real number that matters is the ‘MINIMUM SUSTAINED DATA TRANSFER RATE’ that can be maintained by the hard drive.

In theory the higher platter rotational speeds like 5400RPM or 7200RPM will help improve this number, but there are a lot of other factors like the number of heads and the data recording density and the data interface (ATA100, Serial ATA etc) and how well the motherboard handles high speed DMA.

When looking at these data transfer rates, you should also keep in mind that drive manufactures like to quote really high ‘burst’ data transfer rates, but this doesn’t do crap for long multimedia files once the drive cache is empty.

Are you are concerned about this because you want to get good multimedia capture and playback performance or better DVD burn performance?

For smooth clean video capture and playback, one of the MOST important drive characteristics, which no one seems to talk about very much, is how the drive handles TCAL (internal Thermal Recalibration).

Most drives have to periodically recalibrate to allow for the slight movement of data tracks as the drive warms up (TCAL). Some drives hiccup really badly and basically just shut down all data transfer during TCAL (very bad) while others can either do it on the fly or at least defer it until there is a lull in the data transfer at some point.

I mention this because it is NOT a good idea to willy-nilly change out your hard drive without doing a little research to make sure that the drive that you will be replacing your current drive with is REALLY BETTER.

I got burned by the TCAL thing even though I did try to verify platter RPM and Sustained Minimum Transfer rates.

I replaced a perfectly good 5400 RPM drive with a 7200 RPM drive, hoping to get rid of occasional dropped frames on video captures.

The new 7200 RPM drive would indeed capture at a higher resolution with no dropped frames due to the higher data transfer rate, but then after about 5 minutes of capture . . . BANG . . . it would drop maybe a half second or full second of video.

I ended up putting the 5400 RPM drive back in because it would only drop occasional SINGLE FRAMES, which is not nearly so objectionable as the huge glitches caused by the TCAL handling on the 7200 RPM drive.

If you are only worried about Burning DVD’s as quickly as possible, then the Hard Drive TCAL issue may not nail you if your Burner has solid ‘Burn Proof’ anti-coaster technology (which basically lets it back up the laser recording head and continue a burn when there is a data underflow condition).

Still, even if TCAL is not an issue with your burner, I have seen drives with FASTER platter rotation rates that were really SLOWER on sustained data transfers because of the other factors I mentioned above.

In any case, as far as DVD burning goes, I have found that even older 4200 RPM drives will usually handle 8x burns without data underflow if the motherboard and windows are configured properly, and this is the speed where I get the cleanest burns anyway.

[johnhamler1]

thanks,

at the end i went for a 5400 segate, the 7200 could become to hot and will decrease my batery life..

and I have a 5 years warranty,

[Delphin]

thanks,

at the end i went for a 5400 segate, the 7200 could become to hot and will decrease my batery life..

and I have a 5 years warranty,

Sounds good, all other things being equal the 7200 RPM drives do draw more power and run hotter.

This will change as the technology gets better, but for now, the 5400 RPM drive should not only save battery life, but also improve the drives reliability somewhat (which is why they are willing to give a 5 year warrantee).

Good luck with your new drive. :) :) :)

[DarkZell666]

Nice stuff about HDD's ! I would have never though a split-second that all this existed (TCAL for ex.).

Thx a lot for sharing this ;)